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Late Night Computing: November 2, 2012

Celebrate November 2, 2012 and the arrival of the weekend with one last article: Late Night Computing.

Celebrate November 2, 2012 and the arrival of the weekend with one last article: Late Night Computing.

Here we are, finally Friday. You made it to the end of the week! Do you have anything fun planned? After losing a squad of my best troops in XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Classic Ironman, I may be ready to hang up my command and play something else for awhile. The last few missions were brutal, so this terror mission just topped it all off. Three Colonels! Three! Gone, just like that. What do FTL: Faster than Light and XCOM have in common? You die more than you survive. Have a nice weekend while I go stare at the memorial wall and pour one out for my squad.

News bits:

Watch every episode of Halo: Forward Unto Dawn back to back with this one, singular Youtube playlist [via Major Nelson]

Need something to do this weekend? Here's a list of ten wonderful independent games that will "make you feel something." [via The Astronauts]

Why you should un-plug yourself from the Internet every now and again. The easiest way? Start name calling in any of our political threads to be awarded a one-month ban from Shacknews! [via Elezea]

TIME reveals the best inventions for the year 2012, including Google Glass! [via TIME]

After a devastating week, Wired looks at how we can redesign the New York shoreline to prevent similar catastrophies. [via Wired]

Chatty posts of the moment.

Make sure you log-in and check your filters if you can't see the following:

"What do you get from gaming? Why is it worth it to spend all the time you do on this hobby?

I've been thinking about this a lot in the past couple of days. I have spent so much time playing videogames in my life. They've had a hold on me since I was a kid scrounging for quarters so I could play Operation Wolf or Black Knight 2000 at the arcade. I've had many hobbies over my life and a lot of them have come and gone, but I'm still gaming. What is it about this medium that brings you back, over and over again? Or did it lose you at some point?

I think this answer is different for a lot of people. I'm sure for some people it's just a way to enjoy yourself. For some people it's social; for others it's profoundly anti-social. For some it's another sport, a way to compete. Personally, I think it's about control and power - exerting power over a virtual world when you don't have nearly as much in the real world. There's nothing more fun for me than long-term scheming in games like XCOM or Civ or Total War - and the added thematic hook of determining the fate of nations doesn't hurt one bit.

Spocean alpha demo 0.13. "The Spoceanlords at Woodley Games deliver today a free alpha demo of their gnome-filled space-ocean first-person missile-puncher. Reborn from its original incarnation in the Unreal engine, this Unity-powered project is a game of team-based galleon-crewing warfare." Download the demo for Windows or for Mac.